In MCE I get up a notis that the system has found a new "machine". I add it as a file server. The the system finds my windows share and ask if I wont to use it. I say yes and I say I wont to make it all pouplick. But I can not find the files any where in the MCE. What am I doing wrong.

This adding is a bit confusing if you ask me, but there are a few pointers here.

First, the easiest way not to confuse yourself, is to choose the option to use the LinuxMCE folder structure when asked. This means you have to reorganise your media into the new folder structure it will create for you, but it will mean that your PC will play nicely with the rest of the media and present consistently.

Pretty much as soon as you have done this, you should see the folder structure appear on your Windows share - if this doesn't happen then you have come permissions or connectivity issue.

Connectivity - I would suggest that you create a specific share (don't use $ to hide it) for it to use and create the folder structure under rather than letting it suggest the default admin shares like C$ and D$. Make sure they can each ping each other and that the Windows machine has a valid DHCP address. Try using the Windows machine's Network Neighbourhood to browse back into the Core's hard drive as this will confirm that higher layer network protocols/functions are working (CIFS/SAMBA). If you browse into My Network Places/Entire Network/Microsoft Windows Network, you should see a LinuxMCE "domain", inside that, you should be able to see the profiles and copy files back and forth. Note: it sometimes takes 30 seconds or so to display the icon for LMCE.

Permissions - Make sure that you set the Share to have Everyone - Full Control permission, and the NTFS permissions of the folder itseld to allow full control for the account you intend LMCE to use, if it is a computer in a domain. Depending on OS version, if the machine is just in a workgroup, you may not have the option to set NTFS permissions, in which case set the Share itself to have full permissions only for the account you intend to use for LMCE.

If all this is right, you should see the folder structure appear, if not check in the Windows security log under Computer Management for security audit failures to do with this account - the help link will tell you if it is because the password is wrong or account doesn't exist, locked out, etc.

At this point the media service should start scanning the folders and creating an index in the database of your media. This is slow, expecially if it has to do a lot of work, like creating thumbnails for photos, or downloading stuff. But browsing around the folders in Windows you can often see if it is doing something. Or you can use Computer Management again, under Shares, Files or Sessions and keep hitting refresh - you should occasionally see a connection from the LMCE device to a file as it processes it.

I understand that from the Admin website there is a process (described in another post) that you can manually point at a share/folder and force it to scan again. If it has already found your share and you aren't sure if it is doing anything, you could either delete the share from the admin console and let it find it again, or use this function to force it to start again.

Finally, from what I can see, it only seems to present newly scanned media to you to select from the media menu, after it has completed scanning an entire (single) folder and moved onto the next - purely anecdotal - in which case, if you have some very large folders, it may take a while before you see anything.

Oh, finally, finally! Lots of people see to get stuck on this one (I did, and have seen other posts) - the video and audio browser defaults to sort/searching by "title" or "performer" rather than filename. If you have a lot of media that hasn't got attributes set, then they will only appear if you choose to sort/filter by filename.

Wel tanks fore all your help. Now on the windows machine I have shared the E drive. No I have found 4 new folders in this drive, Public, user 1, user 2, and user 3. Under each of these folders ther are a folder named data, and under this there is 4 new folders named audio video picture and documents. So I copyed some picture from my windows machine and pasted them in the folder picture. Then I went in to the mce and browsed to the folder home/public/data/picture/windows share:E [106] and found the picture I copyed. So now I seems ok, but when I go in to the orbiter ( I thin it is named orbiter the window where I have a line at the bootom where I can pick media the picture.) And pres media then picture I get up 2 folders Flicker and Windows share E: . So I pick Windows share E: and it is emty.

1.What am I doing wrong? 2.Do I have to manually copy the files that I want to have on the mce ore can the core/hybrid scan the windows share fore files?3.I see that in the flicker folder the picture is named xx.jpg.tnj, do I have to rename all my pictures?4.I also copyed some videos to the folder public/data/video and I can find them but no thumbnails. Do I have to make some thumbnails for each of the videos? And if so is there a easy way to do this?

The tnj file is a thumbnail (and other metadata) file that LMCE creates based on your images. Don't create your own or it may confuse it - come to think of it, I think it will just overwrite anything you create!

Any pictures share should have one of these tnj files for each picture file once the share has been catalogued - so if you haven't got them then either 1) the share hasn't been catalogued or 2) if cannot write to the share.

The fact that it has created the folder structure suggests that it can see the share, connect to it and has permissions to write. When it sees this structure for the first time, it should catalogue it straight away but, of course, there is nothing in it. You then added media to it so the question is how long before it checks again? I dunno! But eventually it should find it and add it to the library - or you can login to the Admin console in KDE Desktop, and force it to resync from the media section ... just find the drive in the folder structure and click on the Resync link. You should start seeing the .tnj files appear within seconds, otherwise it isn't working.

If they do appear but you still can't see them in LMCE then you probably have the media menu set to "sort" on an attribute that the pictures do not have, like Title. Change this to Filename, as they all have one of those, and you should then see "folders" in LMCE, one for each share you have and probably one for flickr. Click into the "folder" that represents the share you added and you should see them in there.

Otherwise, I'm stumped! I had lots of problems initially, and most of them were down to 1) sort option, 2) permissions on the share or 3) impatience!

Video is easy - just play the video and fast forward/rewind to a picture you want to use, then in the media menu choose Thumbnail and this will allow you to pick that picture for the thumbnail in the library.

For Audio, not sure for non-rips how you would do this - I think it follows the standard of looking for a particular named file in the same folder, I think one standard name is folder.jpg - so if you put the image in there that you want it should automatically use it. If the Audio files are ripped, and you have an Internet connection, I am assuming that it downloads the tags and cover art, etc from the Internet like most other packages and sets up the images for you automatically, but I haven't tried this as I haven't got an Internet connection for the LMCE yet.

Manage Drives is primarily for optical drives that you may have, either in your Core/Hybrid media director, or in other media directors around the house.. There will be an entry for each optical disc that the system knows about, and there will be entries for any jukeboxes that may be available, such as a Sony VGP-XL1B3 jukebox ($200, a good bargain these days!)

This screen is really useful for two things:

* ripping discs either in the jukeboxes, or in any of the optical drives in any media director, or* for playing a disc in a specific drive, if you don't see it in the video window (e.g. if it is unknown, and Pluto could not find a jacket/metadata entries for it.)

now keep in mind, I said anywhere in the house. This means, if you have a media director in the living room, and in the bedroom, you can check on the drive in the living room. (i.e. if it is ripping something, or if you left a disc in the living room, you can look, see what it is, then play it from here if for some reason you can't see it in the Videos list.)

There are windows as well for card based media (from digital cameras and the like) but I haven't used this feature yet. As for Hard Discs... not EXACTLY sure why this is here... there is a reason for it... i think... :-P

Col. This did not work.I could make a thumbnail of the video if i pressed thumbnail wail playing the video. But I would like to have the cover for my thumbnail not a scene from the video. In the video of LinuxMCE they have the cover picture for that video.

To get thumbnails you can go into the admin site and the media browser and add jpg files as thumnails.Can quickly become a massive amount of work or you can use the "files and media" "cover art" function that will scan Amazon for cover art